Poker Night, Season 3

Two Cities, One Night

Season 3 was the first time we ran Poker Night in both offices on the same evening. Friday 17 July, doors from 6pm, Sydney at Millers Point and Melbourne running in parallel as season 2 has proved the format worked. This one was about whether it could run twice at once and still feel like the same night (it did).

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Sydney Filled Up Early

Registrations closed days out. Well over 100 people put their hand up for a room that holds 40, so we shut sign ups and started asking people to release seats if they could not make it.

Same deal as always: free food, free drinks, and the $50 buy in covered by us. Second buy ins were on the table this season, which kept the people who got cleaned out in the first half hour in their seats and in the conversation instead of reaching for their bag with he official 10pm finish came and went with nobody looking at the door.

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Melbourne Their Own Room

Melbourne was capped at 30 and filled out again, with buy in covered, free food and drinks, and pizzas landing just before doors opened. Being the second event in the Melbourne office, there was no scrambling to work things out. Everyone knew what to do, and the whole night ran itself.

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Why This Works

A poker table does something a scheduled catch up cannot with nobody needs an icebreaker and by the second round you have engineers who ship all week sitting across from founders they would otherwise only meet on a call. Take the pressure off the buy in, put food in the middle of the room, and what is left is a few hours of people genuinely enjoying each other's company and running it in 2 cities on one night made that clearer than ever.

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Season 4

Next one is Thursday 27 August, 6pm to 9pm. Both cities stay in the rotation. Keep an eye out for the Luma link, because the room only holds so many and the seats go fast.

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